Columns

Choo-choo! The sums are still wrong but HS2 steams on

The cleverer the arguments required to justify a plan, the worse it is. I give
by way of example a characteristically ingenious article in The Times by the
soon-to-be Lord Finkelstein, explaining why it really does make sense to
sink upwards of £50bn into the HS2 rail project.

Finkelstein argued that this scheme is exactly analogous to the late Steve
Jobs’s design for the Hollywood studios of the animation business Pixar:
putting everyone in one central atrium, rather than scattered among many
buildings, “would maximise the number of creative encounters”.

No, the Fink doesn’t mean that businessman would engage with businessman to
share brilliant ideas in the first class compartment (when did you ever see
that happen?). The idea is that because Birmingham would become closer to
London by 20 minutes, more wonderfully productive “random” meetings would
occur.